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Tuesday 24 June 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Wright, Lan
Working name of UK author Lionel Percy Wright (1923-2010) for all his fiction; increased responsibilities in manufacturing industry curtailed his writing career. He began publishing sf with "Operation Exodus" in New Worlds for January 1952, and was active for over a decade in UK magazines, chiefly New Worlds and Nebula Science Fiction. His Johnny Dawson series in ...
Pratt, Ambrose
(1874-1944) Australian lawyer and author, in UK circa 1898-1905 where he began to publish stories and novels. Tales of interest include The Great "Push" Experiment (1902), in which a Sydney gang transforms its patch into an enclosed Utopia; Vigorous Daunt: Billionaire (1905), in which the English working class is saved from starvation; The Living Mummy (1910), where archaeologists in Egypt discover a mummy in ...
Boland, John
(1913-1976) UK author and journalist, a prolific story producer, although rarely of sf. His sf novels, White August (1955) and No Refuge (1956), are both set in frigid conditions. The first is a Disaster tale, dealing with the dire effects of a botched attempt at Weather Control. No Refuge depicts a Lost World Utopia in the Arctic, ...
Infocomics
Videogame series (1988). Infocom. / The Infocomics are a line of Comics which were sold as Videogames. Their plots are fully determined in advance, but at various points the reader can switch to a different character's view of the story; multiple readings are required to follow the entire plot. While their visual design and writing are generally unimpressive, the Infocomics are of ...
End of the World
Together with Utopias and cautionary tales, apocalyptic visions form one of the three principal traditions of pre-twentieth-century futuristic fantasy. Visions inspired by the religious imagination go back into antiquity (see Mythology; Religion), and the artist John Martin depicted vast biblical catastrophes with particular relish from the 1820s to the 1850s; but the ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...